


down on the west coast (i get this feeling)

by whomstisthis



Category: Pentagon (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Fingering, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Band Fic, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Oral Sex, References to Depression, Top Shinwon, and they learn a lot about life n love etc, bottom wooseok, soo basically wooseok and shinwon's shitty band go on tour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-18 20:26:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18126083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whomstisthis/pseuds/whomstisthis
Summary: if you asked wooseok how it started, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. all he could say is that they had performed exactly three shows, each at a venue darker and hotter and smokier than the last, before shinwon had pushed him up against the wall of the graffiti-lined bathroom in the back of the third venue and kissed him for the first time, open-mouthed and wet.(or: wooseok and shinwon take a road trip up and down the west coast and learn a lot)





	down on the west coast (i get this feeling)

**Author's Note:**

> Idk man i think i saw a tweet thread once that was like... a shinwon n wooseok band au that inspired me to write this but for the LIFE of me i can’t find it so it might have been a fever dream but it also might exist somewhere so if anyone has seen it and knows its whereabouts ….let me kno 
> 
> O and please support wooseok x kuanlin rn and ptg’s cb on march 27!!! <3 first win first win first win first win first win first win first w
> 
> Cw: very mild refs to drugs/alcohol, some sexual content, some negative self-talk/unhealthy coping mechanisms
> 
> NOw with ALL that being said.... .please enjoy this shit about two bros who kiss , BIG homo <3

If you asked Wooseok how it started, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. All he could say is that they had performed exactly three shows, each at a venue darker and hotter and smokier than the last, before Shinwon had pushed him up against the wall of the graffiti-lined bathroom in the back of the third venue and kissed him for the first time, open-mouthed and wet.

If you asked Wooseok how he feels about Shinwon, he’d tell you that he definitely doesn’t have a crush on him.

Not that you asked.

All he can say is that it becomes a habit sometime after that— Shinwon tugging him by the collar of his sweaty shirt into the back of their shitty van after each gig, both of them high on adrenaline and giggling into each other’s open mouths.  

It’s a tradition of theirs now, a way to calm down after a show. A surge of dopamine— no matter where it comes from— is always appreciated, anyway, seeing as neither of them has the health insurance to pay for antidepressants.

So it’s not surprising that Wooseok finds himself in the back of their parked van, somewhere in northern California— or maybe Oregon? this shit all looks the same to him— halfway in Shinwon’s lap with his jeans pushed down and his hand sliding quick and sloppy up and down both of their cocks.

For Wooseok, who just graduated high school last month and still lived with his parents until three weeks ago, getting off has always been a test of how fast and quiet he can be. So when Shinwon gently pulls his hand away, he makes a noise of confusion.

“Wanna make it last, baby,” Shinwon mumbles into his neck, planting hickies up and down the smooth column of his throat.

Shinwon calls him baby sometimes, but only when their clothes are off.

It’s still weird for Wooseok to even be here. When Shinwon showed up at his house three weeks ago with nothing but a duffel bag and a guitar, telling Wooseok _I’ve got everything sorted out_ and _we can take the van_ and saying some shit about _they said we can play 13 gigs up and down the coast_ and _will you just get in the car, please_ , a big part of him had thought he was fucking with him. He thought that Shinwon was just going to drive him to Sacramento and then by sunrise he would tell him it was all a big joke and they would fuck around the city for a day and then come home.

But he got in the car anyway, and Shinwon did take him to Sacramento, and that night they played a gig at a club that Wooseok was technically too young to legally get into. He shared a cigarette with one of the bartenders after the show ended, and then by the next morning he and Shinwon were in San Jose.

And then the night after that, Shinwon kissed him.

He feels it now, the sting and burn and hurt of that first kiss, as Shinwon’s lips trail up and down and around his collarbone.

“What do you want me to do?” Wooseok just mumbles back, confused because if Shinwon doesn’t want him to jerk them both off then what _does_ he want?

Shinwon just laughs and shifts them around so Wooseok is on the floor, half-sitting and half-lying with his back pressed against the wall of the van. He spreads his legs out of pure instinct and Shinwon settles down in between them, sliding Wooseok’s black jeans off completely and tossing them to the side.

“Just let me take care of you,” Shinwon says, pulling off his own shirt to reveal his tattoos that Wooseok not-so-secretly loves so much.

The words feel acidic and somehow too big for Wooseok’s body, like he’s suddenly seven again trying on his dad’s sweaters and the sleeves go down to the floor and he can’t see or feel his hands, because they’re covered all the way up. He feels younger than he wants to feel and he wishes blindly that Shinwon would say these things to him when it’s not dark outside, so the sun could see.

Wooseok knows vaguely that life is complicated.

He thinks about when they first met, two years ago, when he was sixteen and Shinwon was eighteen and about to graduate. They had study hall during the same period, but they didn’t meet there. They met behind the science building when they were both, coincidentally, skipping study hall. Wooseok’s friend had been trying to teach him how to do a kickflip, but Wooseok was too busy trying to make himself look like he wasn’t trying not to cough from the weed he had just smoked to pay him much attention.

Shinwon was just standing there, against the wall, not interacting. Wooseok remembers wishing he would leave so that he could cough in peace.

He remembers the first time Shinwon opened his mouth, and it was to flirt with Wooseok’s friend. He asked him a little bit about skateboarding and then turned to Wooseok and asked if he could have a hit off the joint he was holding. Wooseok had forgotten he was holding it; it wasn’t even lit anymore.

Shinwon had just laughed and pulled out his own lighter and lit it himself. The next day he sat next to Wooseok in study hall, and by the end of the semester they had formed a shitty band.

Wooseok knows his weird not-crush on Shinwon makes the sex vaguely unethical, but it’s no one’s fault but his own.

And it’s better than nothing, definitely, so when Shinwon sticks two fingers in his mouth, he obediently opens up for him and gets them nice and wet.

He closes his eyes to avoid making eye contact— he does have boundaries, and staring deep into Shinwon’s eyes would be too personal on just about every level. He’s afraid that if he kept them open then Shinwon would read his mind, or search his soul, or maybe just feel bad for him, which is objectively the worst possible scenario.

His eyes are closed when he feels Shinwon’s fingers leave his mouth, and they’re still closed when he feels them snake underneath his boxers, still wet, and enter him gently. Just the middle finger at first, and then the index. Wooseok feels himself shiver as he picks up the pace. Shinwon doesn’t add another finger, and they’re out of lube, so Wooseok knows he’s not getting fucked tonight, but he almost doesn’t care when he feels the tips of Shinwon’s fingers lingering on his prostate.

He squirms, and doesn’t know what to do with his arms.

Shinwon’s not much of a talker, but he bends the rules for a minute to whisper: “hey, relax.”

And since Shinwon says it, Wooseok gives himself permission, lets himself pretend that maybe Shinwon will still want him when the sun is there to see.

The very thought makes his tummy clench, and he still doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he just starts jerking himself off, and with Shinwon’s small but capable fingers inside him he knows he’s not going to last long. But before he can get very far, he feels his hand getting pulled off his dick for the second time tonight, and he’s about to whine in complaint before it’s replaced with another hand that somehow knows what he needs more than he does.

“Tell me when you’re close,” Shinwon pants, thrusting his fingers deeper inside Wooseok.

Wooseok knows what will send him over the edge immediately, and it’s embarrassing, but the three minutes both before and after orgasm are maybe when a person’s inhibitions are the most lowered, and their senses of self-preservation are most impaired, so he allows himself to think the thought against his better judgment.

He imagines Shinwon, of course, and he’s doing everything the same, but only in his fantasy he’s whispering _I love you I love you I love you_ like a mantra into Wooseok’s mouth and fantasy Wooseok just swallows it up and breathes it in.

And then he feels non-fantasy Shinwon’s breath against his inner thigh and his fingers against his sensitive spot and he forgets to tell him that he’s close and just cums like that into Shinwon’s hand, accompanied by a series of high-pitched raspy whines.

“You didn’t tell me you were close,” Shinwon laughs, stroking him through his orgasm as his thighs shake.

Wooseok covers his face with his long arms, still relatively incoherent. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out.

“S’fine,” Shinwon just says, wiping his hand on Wooseok’s thigh. “Guess I surprised you.”

Wooseok doesn’t say anything, too deep in his head to even think about replying. He just reaches down to pull Shinwon’s leaking cock out of his jeans, jerking him off quickly. There’s just something about the way his dick looks in Wooseok’s big hand, contrasted with his chipped black nail polish.

As Shinwon’s breathing gets more erratic, Wooseok bends down and takes his dick into his mouth, sucking him off fast and messy. He’s always been pretty bad at giving head, but he tries really hard, and Shinwon knows just how to take control to make it better so it’s never really that bad. Tangling his hand in Wooseok’s messy black hair, he pushes him further and further down, and only when he’s finally so deep that Wooseok almost gags does Shinwon finally cum inside his mouth with a single shaky moan.

Wooseok swallows everything and it almost tastes like the _I love you_ he dreamed about.

Later, Shinwon drives them to a gas station and buys dry shampoo and a travel size bottle of lube. He parks the van at a nearly empty rest stop and spends the rest of the night carefully opening Wooseok up and taking him apart, smirking every time the younger lets out a whine. And afterwards, when they’re both sated and warm to the touch, they fall asleep to the sound of the cars rushing by on the highway, legs intertwined.

They get to Portland at about two the next day. Their eleventh show is tomorrow night, and Wooseok is acutely aware that the tiny label that had for some reason decided to take them on for a trial run had specified thirteen shows, exactly. So they have about a week left— two shows in Portland and the last one in Seattle— and then they’re coming home.

Well Wooseok is probably going home— back to his parents’ house in San Gabriel, at least. He can’t speak for Shinwon now that he might actually have a shot at this whole music thing. All he knows is that the lease on the house Shinwon shares with three other guys is ending in September and after that there’s officially nothing left to keep him in Southern California, or even California at all.

Wooseok’s going to UC Irvine in September, anyway, and he’s going to major in sociology, if anyone was wondering. Music is something that just kind of fell into his lap a few years ago, but he knows it’s not sustainable, and he isn’t even sure if he’d want to do it as anything more than a hobby. Sure, if Shinwon tells him _we’re going on tour, get in the car_ then he’ll absolutely get in the car, but it’s not exactly because he’s wild about playing the drums.

He remembers the first time Shinwon had talked to him about music. They were in study hall and Wooseok had been doodling in the margins of his shitty copy of The Great Gatsby for the past hour when he felt someone tug on the cord of his headphones, pulling the right one out of his ear.

It was Shinwon, obviously, a second-semester senior bored out of his mind in a study hall full of sophomores, and he grinned at him in a way that made his eyes scrunch up like crescent moons. They had only known each other for a few weeks, at this point.

“What are you listening to?” Shinwon had asked, lolling his head onto the desk next to Wooseok’s arm.

Wooseok had flushed at that, only sixteen and still hesitant and self-conscious about everything including his music taste. “Just like, this band I saw play last week,” he had just said, staring hard at the spaceship he had drawn in the margins of page 134, not letting himself take a peek at Shinwon under any circumstances.

If he had let himself peek, though, he would have seen Shinwon’s smile grow wide. “Can I listen?” he asked.

Wooseok just shrugged and offered Shinwon the earbud that he had already pulled out of his ear, and he took it. And then for the rest of class they just sat there, sharing headphones, as Wooseok resumed his doodles and Shinwon closed his eyes and pretended to nap.

After class they walked to all the way to Wooseok’s house, talking about their favorite bands and songs and lo-fi chill beats to study to or whatever, when suddenly Wooseok had let slip that he had some shitty drums in his basement and it just spiraled from there.

The summer after Shinwon graduated, they played their first “show” at a house party in Long Beach. Wooseok wouldn’t say he misses those days, exactly, but sometimes he wishes he could go back to when everything was less fucking complicated. His not-crush on Shinwon had yet to fully take root at that point, and by their third or fourth house show he had figured out that people, in general, think drummers are pretty cute, and was beginning to learn how to use this to his advantage.

He remembers truly having to reckon with this fact one night that July. They had just finished their “set” — which was, like, two and a half original songs and some covers— and Wooseok was sweaty and tired and getting a beer from the fridge when he felt a hand on his arm.

It was a guy, a kind of cute one, and he asked Wooseok if he was in the band that just played, and Wooseok buried his face in his hands in embarrassment and said _yeah, sorry_.

The guy had laughed and told him that he looked good up there. They talked a little bit longer before Wooseok realized not only that he was being flirted with, but also that he kind of liked it. So he found himself laughing more than he usually would in a normal conversation, and by the end of the night he was getting kissed hard up against the wall.  

After that, he caught on pretty fast. He learned how to open his eyes wider when boys were talking to him to make himself look more innocent (and young, as if he wasn’t already sixteen) and slouch so that he wouldn’t be taller than whoever was trying to pick him up.  

Every time he hooked up with someone after a show, he’d tell Shinwon the next day, and they’d rate the guy according to the scale they had carefully crafted for this exact purpose. Criteria included dick size (length _and_ girth), quality of foreplay, and dirty talk competence.

Shinwon sometimes hooked up with people, too, but Wooseok always got the sense that he was more private about it, somehow.

Either way, by the time Wooseok had entered his senior year of high school, he had calmed down significantly. Sucking off random guys in the grimy bathrooms of every show he played was starting to become more of a chore than an expression of personal autonomy, and not just because he never seemed to get any better at giving head no matter how hard he tried.

If you asked Wooseok, he would tell you that whatever it was that made sleeping around lose its appeal definitely had nothing to do with the fact that his not-crush on Shinwon started hitting him hard around that time.

That September, Shinwon had moved out of his parents’ house and gotten a place in Pasadena with three of his friends, and that’s when Wooseok started feeling… whatever it is that he feels. Suddenly Shinwon wasn’t in walking distance anymore, and the fifty-minute bus ride from San Gabriel to his new house gave Wooseok a lot of time to think.

Sometimes Shinwon would have an afternoon off work and would pick him up from school, but most days Wooseok found himself staring out the window of the 487 bus for half an hour, and then switching to the 268 and staring out _its_ windows for another half an hour, watching the golden hour sun coat the tips of the palm trees and wondering why he was even putting in the effort.

But every time he would get off the bus stop and walk the two blocks to Shinwon’s house just to be met with a big crescent moon smile and an affectionate comment about how he looked like shit, he would remember why.

And so, in short, Wooseok’s not-crush on Shinwon has been basically ruining his life for the past year.

But right now is the first time in a little while that they’ve had a whole day to themselves without the promise of a show at the end of it, and so today they’ve planned to explore Portland with nothing hanging over their heads.

Of course, there’s about a hundred pounds worth of scary shit hanging over Wooseok’s head at any given moment— is this music thing going to go anywhere, is he going to fucking hate college, is Shinwon going to renew his lease, is this whole “unrequited not-crush” going to consume him for the rest of his young life— but technically speaking he’s responsibility-free until tomorrow night, and for one fucking day he just wants to be normal, forget about his shitty feelings, and explore a city he’s never been to with his best friend.

Only, the problem is that they don’t exactly have any “money.” If they did, they definitely wouldn’t be sleeping in Shinwon’s van every night. Their gigs pay just enough to basically transport them from venue to venue without leaving much room for luxuries; although every few days they _will_ splurge for the rare and blessed $12 truck stop shower. If they play their cards right, though, they’re expecting to have enough money by next week to get a motel room for their last night in Seattle. To celebrate finishing the tour or whatever.

But for now, their budget for the day is about twenty dollars for the both of them, which severely limits their options in a rapidly gentrifying city.

“We can, uh,” Wooseok says, sitting on a curb and squinting at his cracked phone screen in the midday sun, “walk around the rose garden in Washington Park?”

“Yeah…” Shinwon says, nodding his head wistfully. “What else?”

Wooseok scrolls down the list. “Umm. Walk around Forest Park? That’s like, northwest—”

“Anything that doesn’t involve walking around parks?”

Wooseok scrolls some more. “The Oregon Rail Heritage Center.”

“What’s that?”

“Some shit about trains.”

Shinwon groans like he’s just been shot. “At this point I’d rather just nap in the van.”

“We do that every fucking day. When’s the next time we’re gonna be in Portland?”

“Gimme your phone then and let me find something,” Shinwon says, holding his hand out. “Fucking trains,” he mutters under his breath, as Wooseok hands him his phone. “Unbelievable.”

Shinwon types some shit into Wooseok’s phone and they sit in silence for a few minutes as his face scrunches up in distaste every time he comes across something he doesn’t like. Wooseok just rolls his eyes, knowing that soon enough Shinwon’s going to find something fun and in ten minutes he’ll forget he had ever pouted in the first place.

Soon enough, Wooseok hears Shinwon say “oh fuck,” and he just smiles to himself.

“Find something?” Wooseok asks.

“Dude, you’re gonna lose your shit,” Shinwon just says, grinning excitedly. “We’re gonna have to pay like five dollars, but it’ll be worth it, holy shit. You’re gonna die.”

So without even telling him what they’re doing, and refusing to give him his phone back, Shinwon leads Wooseok around a city they’ve never been to, laughing the whole time.

As they walk around the sprawling streets Wooseok can’t help but think that Portland is the weirdest place he’s ever been to. The buildings are small and low to the ground, and everything is spread out in a way that’s totally new to him. Tall trees line the streets, but they’re nothing like the palm trees or the scraggly bushes that he’s accustomed to seeing at home— the ones here are flushed with life and appear to be constantly in bloom, even in the hottest part of of the summer. Something about being here makes him feel like he’s gone back in time.

Shinwon points to random shit he sees as they walk, asking “why is this city so obsessed with shitty fucking beer?” as they pass their fourth “microbrewery” in the last three blocks and making Wooseok snort out a laugh.

They also keep seeing rainbow flags everywhere, plastered in the windows of almost every store and blowing in the breeze on almost every block, which just reminds Wooseok that he could be holding hands with Shinwon right now if things weren’t so shitty and complicated. He makes a mental note reminding himself to think about how much this situation fucking sucks tonight when he’s supposed to be sleeping.

But before he can even dwell any more on the topic, Shinwon stops in his tracks in front of a little building with a picture of a cat on the door.

**_Purringtons Cat Lounge_ **

“You’re fucking kidding,” Wooseok says, looking back and forth between the sign on the door and Shinwon’s smug face. “You hate this shit.”

Shinwon’s face turns from smug to indignant. “I do not _hate_ —”

“You won’t even come into my house if you see Haru staring at you through the window.”

Haru is Wooseok’s cat. Shinwon brought him to a cat cafe.

“Completely unrelated detail. Haru thirsts for my blood and hungers for my flesh. The cats at Purringtons Cat Lounge would never treat me like that, and if they do, I can pursue legal action.”

“You’ve put a little bit of thought into this, huh,” Wooseok says, his lips finally quirking upwards in a teasing smile. “It’s almost like… you wanted to do something fun for… _me_.”

“Fun for _us_ ,” Shinwon corrects. “You know how much we— both— love… animals.” And right after he says it, even he can’t help but let out a little laugh, because he and Wooseok both know that for the past ten years he’s been telling everyone who will listen about his debilitating fear of anything with four legs and fur.

“Ah, yes…” Wooseok says, “our… shared interest.”

At this point, they’re both laughing openly. And Shinwon just tells him to get inside because he’s “going to buy him a shitty coffee” and he’s “going to play with cats even if it kills him.”

So they do go inside, and Shinwon does buy Wooseok a shitty, overpriced coffee, and they do play with cats, and it doesn’t kill him.

The cats feed off the vibe, anyway. And the vibe that Shinwon gives off is “might pass out if touched by an animal for more than 30 seconds” and so they generally tend to stay away, which works out just fine for both parties. Wooseok’s vibe, however, is something along the lines of “my body has been made this large specifically so that I can physically cuddle as many cats as possible” which is certainly the truth, and the cats understand this, and they act accordingly.

And if Shinwon thinks that facing his stupid fear of stupid cats was completely worth it just to see Wooseok in such a state of complete and total happiness, then that’s his business.

They spend their last fifteen dollars on thai food after that, and as the sun begins to set they decide to finally cave and walk around a shitty park because what else is there to do? Only, once they get there they realize it’s kind of beautiful actually, and not shitty at all, and they both feel kind of bad for being brats about it earlier.

Wooseok can’t get over how weird Portland makes him feel. He knows he’s definitely still on the West Coast for some unexplained, indeterminate reason, but nothing feels familiar or grounding. The little houses bordering the park look like something out of a fairytale, and if he unfocuses his eyes a little bit he thinks they could be made of gingerbread. There’s no trace of the dusty stucco that essentially every house in LA county is made out of, and the grass is green and wet instead of brown and dead. He’s never been this far north. Or this far anywhere, really. The farthest away from California he’s ever been is Colorado, but he was young and barely remembers it.

He realizes that wouldn’t blame Shinwon if he didn’t want to renew his lease. He realizes that there’s a lot about the world that he doesn’t know.

It all becomes a little bit too much in his head, right then, so he stops walking. Shinwon also stops walking, and looks at him, so Wooseok, on instinct, closes his eyes (which he’s realizing, at this point, is a reflex reaction when Shinwon looks at him).

“Why do you do that?” Shinwon suddenly asks.

“Do what?” Wooseok mumbles, eyes still closed.

“Close your eyes when I look at you. You’re like a deer in the headlights.”

“Don’t want you to read my mind. You have, like, powers.”

“I know I have powers. But why can’t you look at me? Since when do you not tell me shit?”

Wooseok doesn’t want to respond. He can’t respond. So he opens his eyes to save himself the trouble, and he knows they’re kind of glittering with unshed tears, which is embarrassing, so he blinks a few times.

“Do you not just feel eerie right now?” Wooseok just finally asks. “Like, does something not feel off to you?”

“What, like this park is haunted?”

Wooseok has to let out a giant breath to keep from laughing. “No. I mean, maybe. I don’t know. But, like, I don’t know. This city is fucking weird and it keeps making me, like, reflect on shit.”

“Wooseokie…” Shinwon says, “it’s not just Portland that makes you reflect on shit. You’re always reflecting on shit. That’s one of your, like, core personality traits.”

Wooseok breathes out a laugh and realizes that he’s so fucking thankful that Shinwon can bring humor to any situation. Which just makes him sad again, though, because _god_ he’s so thankful for Shinwon and _god_ he wants to kiss him, but under, like, normal circumstances. He wonders if they’ll keep fucking around after the tour ends, at least. Or if it’s only something they’re allowed to do on the road, when the rest of their life is distant and intangible. Maybe he’ll ask tomorrow, when he’s suitably tipsy after being able to finesse a vodka cranberry from the bartender at the venue they’re playing.

But for now he just tells a half-truth, which he tells himself is better than nothing at all. “Okay, you’re right, I guess. But just… I don’t know. Being here just makes me feel like I… might not want to stay in, like, Southern California for my whole life. But nobody, like, let me have the chance to figure any of that shit out before I applied to college so now I’m going to UC fucking Irvine in like, two, months, and right now I just realized that I might not actually… want… to do that.”

It’s the first time he’s articulated this to anyone; Shinwon can tell by the unadulterated misery in his glassy eyes. So his first order of business is to move them both to a bench so they’re not standing in the middle of the path anymore, and then his second order of business is to wrap his arm around Wooseok’s shoulders and bring him close, so he’s laying his head on his chest.

Wooseok knows that Shinwon isn’t good with feelings, and isn’t good with comforting people. That’s why they work so well together. Wooseok rarely expresses himself, prefers to keep everything he’s ever felt bundled nice and neat inside his ribcage because he knows he can handle it best on his own. He knows that Shinwon gets nervous and flighty when people dump shit on him, and so he works hard to never do that.

But now he’s doing it and he feels so fucking bad, and he’s already trying not to cry for his own shitty selfish reasons but now he knows he’s probably making Shinwon uncomfortable too, and just knowing that he’s probably the worst human person to ever exist is what pushes him over the edge.

When this whole tour thing started, he never once imagined that he’d end up on a park bench in Oregon crying into his best friend and not-crush’s t-shirt. But that’s where he is, and that’s what he’s doing, and Shinwon is just kind of rubbing his back and all Wooseok can think about is how much he wants to absolutely disintegrate.

“Wooseok…” Shinwon says in an uncharacteristically soft but still slightly awkward voice. “It’s okay.”

Wooseok sniffles for a little bit longer. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This is so shitty of me.”  

“It’s not shitty of you.”

“I know this isn’t what you want to be doing.”

“You don’t know shit.”

Wooseok just lets out a wet, snotty laugh. “You’re not good at comforting people.”

“I don’t want you to— to like, think that just because I’m kind of, like, bad with handling other people’s emotions sometimes that I don’t want you to ever express an emotion around me. I just really need you to know that, okay?”

“I know that. I just don’t want to make you deal with the shit I should be dealing with on my own.”

Silence. And then Shinwon laughs.

“You’re kind of dumb sometimes, Wooseokie.”

“So are you.”

It’s quiet for a few breaths, enough to hear the cicadas humming around them, before Shinwon speaks. “If you don’t like college, you can quit. Or transfer.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“And it’s not like you’re gonna be… it’s not like you’re gonna be alone, there. All your friends are going.”

“Yeah. I know.” Except you, Wooseok wants to say.

“And you never know. This music thing might work out and then you won’t even have to go to college at all.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“You know everything, huh,” Shinwon says, his arm still around Wooseok’s shoulders even though it’s a bit of a stretch for him. “I’m gonna take care of it, okay? I’m not gonna let bad shit happen to you. Do you know that?”

And after hearing that, Wooseok can’t do anything but scrunch his eyes up so tight because it sounds so much like something he’s heard Shinwon say in one of his fantasies that it makes him physically ache.

They sit there for a little bit longer, listening to the cicadas, before they go.

Wooseok knocks out almost immediately after stepping into the van, as Shinwon drives them north of the city to the nicest truck stop they’ve been to so far. And after he’s parked off to the side of the lot and cut the engine, he can’t help but stare at the boy asleep in the passenger seat. His legs are pulled up onto the seat so he’s curled into a little ball (as little as Wooseok can be, anyway) as his head rests gently on the window. Shinwon can still see, illuminated by the moonlight streaming through the window, tear tracks on Wooseok’s soft cheeks, and he can tell that his eyes are puffy and swollen even when they’re closed.

Normally they sleep together in the back, where there’s room to spread out, but tonight, Shinwon can’t bring himself to wake Wooseok up. So he just unbuckles Wooseok’s seat belt, drags a blanket up from the back, and drapes it over him where he’s sitting, all curled up.

Shinwon vaguely thinks that something important is happening, but he’s too tired to feel it fully. He falls asleep in the driver’s seat, hoping for something he can’t put his finger on.  

When Wooseok wakes up, there’s light flooding his field of vision and his whole body aches. Before his eyes are even able to fully open, he hears Shinwon rustling around somewhere to his left.

Wooseok groans to signal that he’s awake.

“Awake?”

Wooseok groans again in response.

“I got you shit from McDonalds. Make it last because it’s all we’re eating until after the show.”

Wooseok pops his eyes open at that. They eat in relative silence, listening to some local radio station play softly in the background. Wooseok pointedly avoids talking— or even thinking— about last night, and hopes that Shinwon will have mercy on him and do the same.

Luckily, he doesn’t mention anything during breakfast, and if he notices Wooseok in the truck stop bathroom putting concealer on his puffy under-eyes, then he stays quiet about it.

Their two shows in Portland— one that night, and the other the night after— are better than expected. There are no technical difficulties, and the audience pays attention to them, and a lot of people seem to be genuinely interested. Wooseok thinks that the bartender at the second venue definitely has a thing for him because not only does he get his giant, underage hands on _three_ free vodka cranberries after the show, but by the end of the night he finds himself with his number— hastily scrawled in sharpie on a receipt— stuffed inside his pocket. It makes him feel powerful, even if he knows he’s never going to call.

Shinwon jokes about it afterwards, when he’s got Wooseok underneath him, all spread out and begging in the back of the van.

The next day, Seattle.

As planned, the two Portland shows pay them more than the California shows had done, and so to celebrate the end of this fucked up road-trip slash musical-soul-searching-expedition they’re going to rent a motel room for the last night. They’ll play their final gig, and then they’ll get to sleep in a real bed for the first time in almost a month, and then the next morning they’ll start their 18 hour drive back home.

They spend the day not quite knowing what to do with themselves. Seattle is just as weird and unsettling as Portland, and the weather’s nice, so they walk around for a little bit until they eventually get bored and decide to splurge on ice cream. Shinwon gets his with nuts on top, but then decides approximately eight minutes after he gets it that he doesn’t want them anymore, and so he spends most of his time after that picking out every individual nut. Each one he picks out, he puts on Wooseok’s arm.

That night, the show is probably their best one yet. The energy’s right, the audience is right, even the fucking lighting is right, and performing their set is one of the highest highs Wooseok has ever experienced. But as soon as he’s landed his final hit on the drums, and Shinwon has mumbled “thank you so fucking much, Seattle, you were sick” into the microphone, he realizes how absolutely depleted he feels. His eyes are already beginning to droop, and all he wants to do is go home.

But Shinwon says he just wants to talk to the booking guy for _five_ _minutes, I swear, I just wanna say thanks_ so Wooseok finds himself waiting in the alley outside the bar, sitting propped against the wall with his head resting on his knees. He’s almost fully fallen asleep when he finally hears the door jingle open, followed by several loud voices disrupting the still night air.

Shinwon comes around the building, and trailing behind him are at least four people.

“Hey,” Shinwon says breathlessly, nudging Wooseok lightly with his foot. “We’re invited to a thing. Do you wanna go?”

And Wooseok really fucking doesn’t. But the look on Shinwon’s face is one of pure excitement, and they’ve really been hanging out with only each other for almost an entire month, so maybe Shinwon deserves this. One night at some shitty party won’t kill him. So he nods his head and lets Shinwon pull him up off the asphalt.

Only, it’s about thirty minutes into the party when Wooseok realizes that it might, actually, kill him. He’s sitting on the couch with his fourth cup of something gross in his hand, sipping it somehow both sleepily and angrily at the same time as he watches Shinwon get hit on relentlessly by one of the guys who had been at the bar earlier. Probably the guy who invited him in the first place.   

It’s not that Wooseok cares about Shinwon getting flirted with, or the fact that Shinwon’s flirting back. He needs to make that clear. He doesn’t care that across the room Shinwon is laughing in a way that doesn’t make his eyes scrunch up. It doesn’t affect him. He’s just mad that Shinwon made him come here when all he wants to do is sleep, in a bed. That’s it.

Some girl comes to where he’s sitting glumly on the couch and tries to talk to him, but he’s really just not feeling it, so he says he doesn’t feel well, and escapes to the bathroom. Wistfully, he realizes that he’s forfeited his spot on the couch, and knows that by the time he gets back it’ll be gone. This night just keeps getting worse.

In the bathroom, he looks at himself in the mirror and gets so pissed off, for some reason. He can’t explain the rage that suddenly shakes his nervous system with so much force he has to take a step back for a moment. He looks at his stupid face, eyes still a little puffy from sobbing into Shinwon’s chest last night, and gets even angrier. This situation fucking sucks. He wants to cry and be held. But then he remembers that he’s so fucking tall and he’ll never be able to be held the way he wants to be, and just _God, this fucking sucks_.

He drinks the rest of the gross shit in his cup and almost tears up. According to his phone, it’s almost midnight. His body is begging him to sleep, and he decides that he hates Seattle and that he’s never gonna come back. He realizes he’s never gonna see the people at this party ever again, and so he feels less bad about going up to Shinwon and acting like a baby and a killjoy or whatever, because if he doesn’t get to sleep in the next hour he really can’t be held accountable for what he might do.  

So he goes out to the living room where he remembers seeing Shinwon last, but obviously he didn’t really account for the fact that Shinwon might be making out with that guy from the bar. And Shinwon is, in fact, making out with that guy from the bar, and what makes it worse is that they’re sitting in the seat that Wooseok just vacated, not ten minutes ago, to escape from that girl. The guy is half in Shinwon’s lap, the way Wooseok has been for the past fucking month.

It doesn’t hurt, it really doesn’t, honestly, Wooseok is just so tired.

So he doesn’t feel bad about going up to the couch, which Shinwon is currently getting pressed into, and tapping on his shoulder. The guy stops licking into his mouth. Wooseok wants to die.

“Um, sorry,” Wooseok says, stumbling over his words. Maybe he’s more drunk than he thought. “I just needed to tell you I’m, um, going home.”

“Home?” Shinwon asks, breathless, lips so fucking red.

“Um, the hotel, sorry. I’m just really tired. Will you be okay to get an uber?”

Shinwon just looks at him like he’s not speaking English.

Wooseok turns to the guy on Shinwon’s lap. “Is he okay? Is he on something?”

“I’m not on shit,” Shinwon snaps before the guy can answer. “I’ll be fine, thanks Wooseokie. Don’t wait up.”

Wooseok sees red as he walks outside, biting his lip and tasting copper.

But when he gets in his uber, the anger goes. Replaces itself with something else, something much more painful, just sitting there inside his chest with nowhere to go.  

His uber driver is playing Sufjan Stevens, and before he even realizes it, he’s crying, just a little bit. God, what is fucking wrong with him?

He must be sniffling louder than intended, because the driver looks at him sympathetically through the rearview mirror and just asks: “Girl trouble?”

Wooseok just laughs, and it sounds soggy and uncomfortable. “Yeah. Yeah.”

When they get to the motel, the driver says “Don’t be too hard on yourself. She’ll be back.” Wooseok says thanks, and then as he’s swiping into his room starts crying again. The motel is pretty shitty, and Wooseok doesn’t mind because it’s completely superior to the van that he’s been calling home for the past month, but it just hurts because he was supposed to be enjoying it with Shinwon. And Shinwon is enjoying himself in somebody else’s bed right now, probably.  

Wooseok just takes off his pants and burrows under the covers until he feels comfortable enough to at least stop crying. And he wants so badly just to sleep, for his body to forget everything and mimic death for about twelve hours, but now that he’s in bed and thinking about the hug that he wants to badly and that he’s not getting, he’s wide awake.

He picks up his phone and puts on the first playlist he sees, hoping that he’ll get lulled to sleep by whatever shitty music his idiot subconscious has chosen for him, but the first song that plays is Miss Misery by Elliott Smith, which naturally makes even more tears threaten to fall and stain the (already-stained) motel bed sheets.

He’s already played it five times, and is on his sixth listen, when the door to the room starts rattling. And all Wooseok can think of is how fucking embarrassing it would be if a murderer came in to kill him right now and he was just here, lying to Miss Misery by Elliott Smith.

He hears muffled cursing outside the door, and wonders how much time he has left before the murderer comes in and laughs at him for being so fucking pathetic. But then his phone rings, and it’s Shinwon, telling him to _open the fucking door please I lost the key and I’m cold_.

So Wooseok gets up to let him in, and then crawls back into bed. Shinwon sits on the edge.

“Are you listening to Miss Misery by Elliott Smith?”

Wooseok turns it off. “No.”

“Okay.”

Silence for a little bit, only broken by Wooseok’s intermittent sniffling.

“Why’re you back?” he finally asks, voice muffled under the covers.

More silence, before Shinwon finally says: “Remember what you said about Portland being a city for like, reflection, or whatever?”

“Mm.”

“Well, I think I get it.”

“We’re not in Portland anymore. This is Seattle.”

“Dude, the whole Pacific Northwest is fucked up.”

Wooseok snorts at that, both annoyed and happy that Shinwon can still make him laugh while he’s curled up in a motel bed in his boxers with residual tears on his cheeks. “True.”

Loaded silence.

“I didn’t fuck that guy,” Shinwon just says after a moment, softly. Wooseok peeks out of the covers to see that Shinwon is just staring at the wall. It’s something they both do, when things get serious. Avoid eye contact.  

“You could have,” Wooseok mumbles. “It’s our last night on tour. You could have. I wouldn’t have cared. I just wanted to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Shinwon says, “I could have.”

Wooseok doesn’t reply.

“We were making out in, like, his room. And when he took my shirt off, he was like ‘cool tattoos,’ and I was like ‘hey, thanks.’”

This is the absolute last thing Wooseok wants to hear. He wonders if Shinwon really hates him.

“He asked what the story behind this one was,” he says, pointing to a little doodle of a dog wearing a cowboy hat on his upper arm.

And Wooseok knows exactly what the story behind it is. Wooseok had actually drawn it first— it was one of the many shitty doodles he had done in the margins of his assigned books during study hall, years ago. Shinwon had seen it, and liked it, and so without even thinking, Wooseok ripped out page 59 of Wuthering Heights and gave it to him.

The next day, Shinwon came into class with his arm in plastic wrap, and underneath it was Wooseok’s shitty drawing, inked into his skin for the rest of his life.

When Wooseok had laughed and asked him “why the fuck did you do that?” Shinwon had just shrugged and said “I liked it.”

And that was that.

And so now, hearing this story, Wooseok just feels like genuine shit, and is considering saying fuck it and letting himself cry again.

But before he can do anything, Shinwon keeps going, his words coming out more quickly than usual as if he’s afraid if he doesn’t get them out now, then he never will: “Like, you know this is my favorite tattoo. Out of all of them.”

Wooseok didn’t know that. He sits up, finally, so that his back is propped up against the headboard and so he’s staring somewhere near Shinwon, but not at him.

“Yeah, anyway, he asked me what the story was and so I took a minute to think about what the story actually was. And then I did some, um, reflecting. Wooseok-style. And I realized, I think, that I got this tattoo because I had a crush on you. And I didn’t want to tell him that, because it felt private, and also because, like, I would have had to tell him that I, like, still do. Have a crush on you. And that probably would have fucked up the mood. But the mood was already fucked up for me, because I think I had just realized for the first time in that moment— y’know, in my actual conscious brain— that I had a crush on you. So I had to think about that. So I left.”

Wooseok doesn’t know how to react. He feels nauseous. His sympathetic nervous system is freaking out. He wishes he could tell it that there’s no danger here, that he’s safe, that his fight or flight response is completely unnecessary in this situation, but he’s honestly not sure if he can do that.

“You… what?”

“I should have told you this after our 18 hour car ride. Fuck.”

“No, no,” Wooseok says, stumbling over his words. “Um, no. Wait, just hold on. Let me, just, like—.”

“Dude, just forget I said anything. I’ll put Miss Misery back on, you go to sleep, I’ll sleep in the van, just wait a second for me to brush my—”

“Shut up, for a second, please,” Wooseok says, squishing his head between both of his hands. Shinwon shuts up.

“Are you telling me that you like me?” Wooseok finally asks, taking his hands off his head.

Shinwon just nods.

“As a… friend?”

Shinwon snorts. “I left that guy’s house because I literally couldn’t stop thinking about you. Kissing you, whatever. But lately, even kissing you isn’t, like… enough. Because every time I kiss you I can’t stop thinking about, like. Other shit. Gay shit. Romance shit.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s so funny, Shinwon.”

“Okay, I understand that you are absolutely under no obligation to return these unfortunate feelings I harbor towards you, but you don’t have to be _mean_ —”

Wooseok cuts him off: “I mean it’s so fucking funny because this whole trip I’ve been fantasizing about you telling me what you just told me. But now you said it and I don’t fucking know how to act. I guess I’m better at pretending than I thought.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“So you had a crush on me this whole time?”

“Yeah.”

Shinwon laughs. “Embarrassing.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, you’re the one who just monologued for like ten minutes straight about having a crush on _me_ —”

“Yeah, but that’s when I thought it was unrequited. Now that I know you liked me too the whole fucking time we’re on an equal playing field again.”

“Dude, you don’t make any fucking sense.”

“Yeah, I’m feeling pretty crazy right now. I think I want to kiss you. Is that cool?”

“Yeah, that’s cool.”

So Shinwon leans over Wooseok on the shitty motel bed, cages him in with his arms, strokes his cheek a little bit with his fingers that are callused from years of playing the guitar, and then kisses him. Their first kiss, in a sense.

It feels new and old at the same time. Shinwon tastes like whatever gross drink they had been given at the party, and Wooseok is sure he tastes the same, but underneath the acidic tang of the alcohol lies the taste of something less easy to categorize, like pop rocks on your tongue, or soda bubbles. Wooseok can’t help but smile into Shinwon’s mouth, causing their teeth to knock together, which causes Shinwon to smile. Wooseok feels like maybe he can stop fantasizing now.

“Hm,” Shinwon says, after it’s over. “That was our first kiss without us being bros.”

“We’re still bros. Fuck you.”

“Bros who kiss.”

“Sounds kinda hot.”

“Bros who kiss but are also kind of dating.”

“Is this you asking me out?”

“Would you say yes if I said that it was?”

“Yeah.”

“Then yes, that was me asking you out.”

“Cool. Yes. I say yes.”

That night they will fall asleep wrapped around each other, and the moon will bleed its shivering light through their window to make patterns on the motel room wall. And in the morning they will kiss again, with the promise of an 18 hour drive (and then the rest of their lives) on their lips, and it will feel important, like it matters somehow, in a way that is bigger than normal.

They’ll leave behind the Pacific Northwest, a happy tangled blur of truck stop showers, and wet green grass, and the walnuts Shinwon left drying sticky on Wooseok’s arm. A place for reflecting, for playing music, for kissing and laughing. They’ll make their way down the coast and back to California and it will be the same as they left it, but different somehow.

And somewhere around the Washington-Oregon border, Wooseok will reach over the console and take Shinwon’s hand in his own, and the sun will be bright in their eyes, and it will feel like everything is happening all at once.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u all sm for reading!!! please leave a comment/kudos/bookmark if u r feeling kind <3


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